Harbinger

by Philippa Ballantine

  Raed held her against him as he leaned against the wall of the citadel, and she leaned back so that only their lower torsos were touching. It was comforting, but not so distracting that either of them couldn’t think.

  Sorcha closed her eyes for a moment, raised the pitiful cigarillo to her mouth, pulled the smoke into her, and then exhaled it away from him. She spoke softly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us . . . to the Order . . . or whatever we are now.”

  They had been running, in danger for their lives from both the Imperial army and the Native Order for months, but he’d never seen her so concerned as she was right now. He squeezed her just a fraction. “With you able to open the Wrayth portals, we can go anywhere we like. We can rebuild the Order with time . . .”

  Her full lips twisted. “That is what we don’t have, my love. Last night’s attack drove home that point very well. The barrier between this world and the Otherside is incredibly weak now. Derodak has done something—something awful—while we have been running, and soon it will reach a tipping point.” Raed felt a long-held-in sigh ripple through her body. “Merrick is in a Conclave with some of the other Sensitives right now. They are trying to use runes to see which way forward we must go. I don’t like relying on foresight—but what other option do we have?” Her eyes held his, and Raed realized she was actually asking him about the future of the Order.

  He’d been at this point much earlier in his own life. Shortly after the Rossin had killed his mother he’d been swept away on a tide of depression and entropy; unable to decide what to do since all options looked equally dire. He’d relied on his role as son to the Unsung Pretender to the throne of Arkaym as much as Sorcha had relied on hers as a Deacon of the Order of the Eye and the Fist.

  “You do what you do best,” Raed said, cupping one hand against her cheek. “You make something out of nothing. Isn’t that what wielding the runes is all about? You use your own strength to make things happen. You see the path with an enlightened eye that Merrick and you share. You defend, just as you always have. Just because the Mother Abbey is gone, and everything torn apart, that doesn’t change who you are.”

  Sorcha swallowed hard then leaned into him. They embraced in the moist air, with the sound of the waterfall at their backs. It was the kind of embrace that said this was all of the world—even if for just an instant. It hurt to stop holding her.

  After she had squeezed Raed, Sorcha pulled back a fraction. “You’re right, but that doesn’t change anything much—we can’t go back to what we were.” She took a final draft of the cigarillo, before dropping it to the ground and grinding it with her heel. “We must make ourselves anew and become something else. The Order of the Eye and the Fist is dead, and we can’t pretend differently. We can’t shackle ourselves to what was.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I just said what you were already halfway to deciding anyway?” Raed said, with an uncertain smile.

  “Maybe because I am inside your head?” Sorcha leaned over, tapped his forehead, then kissed him lightly on the lips. “I have an appointment. One I’ve been avoiding for quite a while.”

  He watched her stride over to the door, as straight backed and determined as on the first day he’d met her. Raed was just thinking that nothing much had changed, when she proved him wrong.

  Hand on the door handle, she paused and looked back at him. “Is everything all right with the Rossin, Raed? You have him under control, right?”

  By the small gods, Raed hadn’t wanted her to ask that particular question, but there it was. He smiled and replied, “Everything is under control.”

  Sorcha nodded and left the battlements. It was indeed a sign that things were turning dramatically toward the worse—she hadn’t heard his thoughts. The Bond that connected Raed, Sorcha and Merrick had once been so strong that he’d been unable to hide anything from them. Now however, with the combined problems of lost foci, new runic tattoos, and the closeness of the Otherside, it appeared Raed could get away with disassembling.

  The thought did not fill him with joy—only dread. He hadn’t exactly lied to her; everything was under control. Unfortunately, Raed had the sinking feeling it was not he that had the control, but instead it belonged to the other darker, more primal creature that lurked within him.

  EIGHT

  Tracing the Thread

  Walking away from Raed was more difficult than Sorcha could have possibly communicated; when he held her, she just wanted to disappear into that embrace. She had clenched her fingers into the palms of her hands hard, because she dared not hold on to Raed too long or lose her will to step away.

  With what had gone on the previous night, Sorcha had known there was no other choice; she had to visit the Patternmaker. She’d just wanted to think by herself for a moment—just her and her cigarillo and the roar of the waterfall. Raed’s arrival had not been unwelcome, since it had put off the inevitable.

  However, she hadn’t told him where she was going, or what she was planning to do; he’d have wanted to go along with her. This was her burden to bear. She was the one that had taken the Patternmaker’s bargain.

  As she walked slowly up the steps, she felt tentatively along the Bond. Merrick was there, but there was no support to be had from him; his presence was like the whispering of many distant voices. That was better too. He had enough to worry about, hunting out the future.

  The closer Sorcha got to the high, isolated room that the Patternmaker had taken for his own, the more the smell of death reached her nostrils. Her breath colored the air in front of her white, and despite all that she had seen in her time as a Deacon, she was a little nervous.

  In the tumult of the foci that had once contained the runes being taken from them, and the Mother Abbey burning, Sorcha knew they had all grasped whatever hope had been laid before them. They had been desperate for it. Even the ravings of a madman had seemed sensible in those times, but now given a little more space to look around, she and many others had begun to wonder who they had allied themselves with.

  That was why it was a relief that the Patternmaker had claimed a room in the highest portion of the citadel. Very few went there, even the well-meaning lay Brothers could not find it in themselves to climb the steps she was climbing.

  The Patternmaker was something more than human, but not geist—at least that was what the Sensitives had said. However, the days of Sorcha trusting what she had once taken as fact were long gone. She had to find the answers for herself.

  Finally, she reached the door and stood there for a moment, like a nervous initiate lingering on the threshold of her Arch Abbot’s doorway. She strained her ears to hear what was going on behind that door.

  The Patternmaker was talking. It was a language, she was sure of that, but unlike any that she knew of in the Empire or in Delmaire.

  Her stomach clenched, and the runes on her arms tingled as if they were on fire. She hovered there, caught between the desire to kick the door in, and the strange urge to knock politely.

  In the end, Sorcha compromised, and edged the door open a fraction and peered in. The rank odor of unwashed human was hardly what one might have expected from a holy man, but as a Deacon, Sorcha had met more than her fair share of filthy madmen who had claimed that title; she had just never imagined one being part of any Order.

  If they were still an Order.

  Words in her head. Sorcha froze in the act of entering the room. It was not Merrick’s voice, nor the rumble of the Rossin. She did, however, recognize the tone. The Wrayth. A chill rush went through her.

  Blindly, Sorcha opened her Center. All Deacons had some ability in Sight and Activity, but her Sensitivity was minimal. Still she tried her best to feel any trace of the Wrayth about her. Nothing.

  It was a relief though to feel that Merrick’s mind was still murmuring into the void, and giving no indication he had been disturbed by another voice in their Bond.

  Sorcha looked up through the gap in the doorway. What was the Patternmaker doing? C
uriosity and fear warred within her. The Deacon glanced down at her hands and the swirling shapes of the runes that he had carved into her skin. It was done. They had taken his help, and now she would have to find out the cost of it.

  With her knee she nudged the door open wider and stepped boldly inside. As the top room in the citadel was buried mostly in the cliff itself, there was only one window, and the Patternmaker had covered that with a blanket. The inside was gray, and the far walls impossible to see. The smell fulfilled the promise it had made outside, and she raised her hand to her mouth to try and muffle it. Only training kept her from throwing up.

  Smell was one of the senses that heralded a geist attack—though what that could mean she didn’t want to think too hard on. The Patternmaker was not a geist; she held on to that fact as best she could.

  Could you see the Rossin in the Young Pretender?

  Shock froze Sorcha in midstride. The mocking tone, the female voice, all reminded her of the time in the Wrayth hive. The geistlord had spread itself over so many humans, taken them as slaves, and made them into a wasp nest for one purpose. Her mother, a raped and tortured prisoner of the Wrayth, had born her in the hive. Her father must have been one of the geistlord’s drones. She would probably never know his name.

  Though she’d tried desperately not to think about the Wrayth and concentrate simply on using the abilities she’d been given, her heritage made her the only one capable of saving the remains of the Order. For months she’d been opening their portals and leading them from place to place; so fixed on escape that she’d been able to ignore those horrible facts. Now, Sorcha felt a fool. Could she have put the remains of the Order in danger just by being who she was?

  “Come in.” The voice, actually spoken outside of her own head, made Sorcha flinch. “Shut the door.”

  Her right hand prickled slightly and drifted to the hilt of her saber that hung at her side. Deacons were always armed, but it was not her greatest resource. Carefully, she reached out and flicked the door shut. The room was plunged into near total darkness, and Sorcha had the real sense that she was trapped in a room with a wild animal—one that she could not see.

  Her Center was her only choice—but a very shabby one it was. She could make out the vague outline of the room’s walls, and warmth and life near the back of it. “Is this darkness really necessary?” she snapped. “It’s a little too theatrical for my tastes.”

  The Patternmaker—it had to be him, surely—laughed; a strange echoing noise that seemed to come from much farther off than the rear of the room. He’s not a geist, Sorcha reminded herself, and strode deeper into the room.

  But you are.

  “Damn it!” Sorcha let her frustration escape her lips.

  Something skittered in the shadows. It had to be a rat, even if she couldn’t see anything living apart from the hunched form of the Patternmaker. It was strange that this was the man that had helped them, and yet in this moment Sorcha felt more in danger than she had the previous night facing geists that had spilled over from the Otherside.

  “Too many voices?” the Patternmaker hissed. “Now you live in my painful world.”

  Another rattle of feet—this time to her right. Sorcha realized she was being encircled, yet it was ridiculous to feel this way, Sorcha reminded herself; he was an old man. Apart from that, she was in a citadel full of Deacons, and this was the man that had tattooed her skin with the runes, making it possible for them to fight geists and the Native Order.

  Straightening, Sorcha stepped more boldly toward the form of the Patternmaker. “I have come—”

  “I know why. The Otherside is closer, spilling over to your world.”

  He spoke so clearly that she paused her approach. When last she had spoken to him, he had not been nearly this coherent. “How do you know that?” she asked and immediately understood it was a stupid, childish question to pose. The Patternmaker was attuned to the Otherside better than even a Deacon.

  Now the skittering came closer, and she could have sworn something brushed her boot. She kicked out. That was impossible! She was not so blind with her Center that she would miss something coming that near. Was this how normal folk felt? She’d had a taste of this before and had liked it about just as much then.

  “We feel it,” the old man’s voice slid out of the shadows.

  You feel it too.

  Sorcha grabbed her head, slapping her hands on each side of it like a child trying to deny reality. The same tiny primitive part of her brain wanted to turn and flee out of the room completely—however she had never really been anything but a Deacon, trained to be a truth seeker. She’d been taught to hold fast, but it felt like there was very little left to hold on to.

  Feeling out with one hand, she clasped the wet, dank stone, and slid to her knees. In the deep dark of the room, the only light was now beginning to grow on her own arm. The runes that the Patternmaker had carved on her flesh were shifting and moving. The shapes of the runes—which she knew better than the shape of her own body—were making new forms; ones that she did not recognize.

  “Everything is changing, Harbinger.” The Patternmaker’s voice wrapped itself around her, giving voice to her own terrors. “You are part of it, more deeply than any other person in this realm. You are woven into its warp and weft like a sharp Wrayth-made little thread.”

  Sorcha’s eyes widened as she watched the patterns shift and dance. “What do I need to do?”

  His voice hissed from the shadows and was echoed by those now bouncing around in her head. “The Harbinger makes the changes. Only you can decide what those are—that is the joy and the horror of your creation.”

  That was when the Deacon froze. In her mind she heard again the mother she could not remember but had experienced in the Wrayth’s lair. They had been breeding the Deacons they had caught down there. Sorcha had so completely turned her mind away from the horror of that, she had neglected to consider what their goal had been.

  In the depths the Patternmaker, Ratimana, laughed. “They made you, but they were not expecting you. They wanted a way to work the runes of the Deacons, without any of that pesky human will getting in the way.”

  “How do you know all this? What are you?” Sorcha held her arms before her and stumbled forward like a blind person. She had to have those answers even if it meant tearing them from the twisted man with her bare hands.

  Her fingers brushed against skin as soft and giving as boiled flesh. Despite her training, she flinched back. The runes on her own flesh sparked to light, casting an eerie glow on the face of the Patternmaker. He looked up at her, a broken and frail old man, but in the light of the runes his eyes burned. They flashed as the Rossin’s did.

  Sorcha held her trembling arms, burning with light close to him, and realized the truth of it. The Patternmaker was a geistlord—as much as the Rossin was, as much as she was.

  His unnerving grin flashed across his lips, exposing teeth that were now far too large. “I am like you, Wrayth. Another portion created as a scout, in the time of the Break, sent into this world to find flesh and home.”

  Sorcha froze in place. She did not want to howl or move or show any form of weakness in front of this creature. Still her eyes wandered down to her own arm, which now felt like it belonged to someone else; an alien thing that shouldn’t have been attached to her body. The runes on it gleamed and twisted.

  Sorcha’s breath jammed in her chest, as her thoughts bubbled up. She had brought the other Deacons to this place. They had carved the runes into themselves in the exact same way she had, because she had showed them the way and they had been desperate. Instead, she’d contaminated them. She’d made them like she was; filthy with Wrayth powers.

  “What did you find?” Sorcha choked out, unable to voice the real questions crowded in her mind.

  “I found freedom. I found I did not want to be part of any hive mind. I wanted to be myself and not part of them.”

  Sorcha needed Merrick, but she was too ashamed to c
all for him. Without his better-trained Center she was struggling, but she knew he would have been able to get to the truth.

  “This is the truth,” Ratimana went on. “The truth you have been trying to hide from. You and I are the same creatures. We are survivors.”

  The sound of him coming closer was like a snake moving on stone, it made her skin crawl. “You hear them, just like I do—but the difference is . . . they will come for you. They still want you.”

  Sorcha stared down into his inhuman eyes and was lost for words. She had come here for reassurance and instead had found horror. Her jaw tightened as she looked at the Patternmaker. If she couldn’t find her bravery soon, then she would just have to fake it. “Not if I find them first,” she replied, clenching her hand, burning with light, tightly closed.

  NINE

  An Old Love

  A Conclave was a tricky thing; it was easy to lose oneself in the soft morass of the group-mind. A hundred worries, dreams, feelings and sensations wrapped themselves around Merrick. Suseli’s fears from last night’s horrific dream screamed in his ear, while Heroon’s idle thoughts about whether his lover was really the one he wanted were distracting. The tangle of so many muttering voices was a trap for the inexperienced Sensitive, and Merrick had not been that long out of the novitiate—in reality it was only a year and a half since he had left the security of training. However, anyone working with Sorcha got more experience than they had bargained for.

  Now, Merrick put that experience to use. He imagined the strands of the different people in the Conclave threading between his fingers, like brightly colored tendrils of wool. He held them apart from each other and more importantly from his own self. He used his will to sort the tangle out, and was surprised by his own dexterity. The Presbyter of the Sensitives, Yvril Mournling, who had trained Merrick in the novitiate, would have been impressed—if he’d been able to move from his deathbed that was. Few remained with the skill to hold a Conclave together, and so there was no one around to pat Merrick on the back. He sorely missed the community of Sensitives he had taken for granted in the Mother Abbey.